Parade's End (67 page)

‘I saw your girl yesterday. She looked peaky. But of course I have seen her several times, and she always looks peaky. I do not understand why you do not write to them. The mother is clamorous because you have not answered several letters and have not sent her military information
she
wants for some article she is writing for a Swiss magazine… .’

Sylvia knew the letter almost by heart as far as that because in the unbearable white room of the convent near Birkenhead she had twice begun to copy it out, with the idea of keeping the copies for use in some sort of publicity. But, at that point, she had twice been overcome by the idea that it was not a very sporting thing to do, if you really think about it. Besides, the letter after that – she
had
glanced through it – occupied itself almost entirely with the affairs of Mrs. Wannop. Mark, in his naïve way, was concerned that the old lady, although now enjoying the income from the legacy left her by their father, had not immediately settled down to write a deathless novel; although, as he added, he knew nothing about novels… .

Christopher was reading away at his letters beneath the green-shaded lamp; the ex-quartermaster had begun several sentences and dropped into demonstrative silence at the reminder that Tietjens was reading. Christopher’s face was completely without expression; he might have been reading a return from the office of statistics in the old days at breakfast. She wondered, vaguely, if he would see fit to apologise for the epithets that his brother had applied to her. Probably he would not. He would consider that she having opened the letter must take the responsibility of the contents. Something like that. Thumps and rumbles began to exist in the relative silence. Cowley said: ‘They’re coming again then!’ Several couples passed them on the way out of the room. Amongst them there was certainly no presentable man; they were all either too old or too hobbledehoy, with disproportionate noses and vacant, half-opened mouths.

Accompanying Christopher’s mind, as it were, whilst he read his letter had induced in her a rather different mood. The pictures in her own mind were rather of Mark’s dingy breakfast-room in which she had had her interview with him – and of the outside of the dingy house in which the Wannops lived, at Bedford Park… . But she was still conscious of her pact with the father and, looking at her wrist watch, saw that by now six minutes had passed… . It was astonishing that Mark, who was a millionaire at least, and probably a good deal more, should live in such a
dingy
apartment – it had for its chief decoration the hoofs of several deceased race-winners, mounted as inkstands, as pen-racks, as paper-weights – and afford himself only such a lugubrious breakfast of fat slabs of ham over which bled pallid eggs… . For she too, like her mother, had looked in on Mark at breakfast-time – her mother because she had just seen Christopher off to France, and she because, after a sleepless night – the third of a series – she had been walking about St. James’s Park and, passing under Mark’s windows, it had occurred to her that she might do Christopher some damage by putting his brother wise about the entanglement with Miss Wannop. So, on the spur of the moment, she had invented a desire to live at Groby with the accompanying necessity for additional means. For, although she was a pretty wealthy woman, she was not wealthy enough to live at Groby and keep it up. The immense old place was not so immense because of its room-space, though, as far as she could remember, there must be anything between forty and sixty rooms, but because of the vast old grounds, the warren of stabling, wells, rose-walks, and fencing… . A man’s place, really, the furniture very grim and the corridors on the ground floor all slabbed with great stones. So she had looked in on Mark, reading his correspondence with his copy of
The Times
airing on a chair-back before the fire – for he was just the man to retain the eighteen-forty idea that you can catch cold by reading a damp newspaper. His grim, tight, brown-wooden features that might have been carved out of an old chair, had expressed no emotion at all during the interview. He had offered to have up some more ham and eggs for her and had asked one or two questions as to how she meant to live at Groby if she went there. Otherwise he had said nothing about the information she had given him as to the Wannop girl having had a baby by Christopher – for purposes of conversation she had adhered to that old story, at any rate till that interview. He had said nothing at all. Not one word… . At the end of the interview, when he had risen and produced from an adjoining room a bowler hat and an umbrella, saying that he must now go to his office, he had put to her without any expression pretty well what stood in the letter, as far as business was concerned. He said that she could have Groby, but she must understand
that,
his father being now dead and he a public official, without children and occupied in London with work that suited him, Groby was practically Christopher’s property to do what he liked with as long as – which he certainly would – he kept it in proper style. So that, if she wished to live there, she must produce Christopher’s authorisation to that effect. And he added, with an equableness so masking the proposition that it was not until she was well out of the house and down the street that its true amazingness took her breath away:

‘Of course, Christopher, if what you say is true, might want to live at Groby with Miss Wannop. In that case he would have to.’ And he had offered her an expressionless hand and shepherded her, rather fussily, through his dingy and awkward front passages that were lit only from ground-glass windows giving apparently on to his bathroom… .

It wasn’t until that moment, really, that, at once with exhilaration and also with a sinking at the heart, she realised what she was up against in the way of a combination. For, when she had gone to Mark’s she had been more than half-maddened by the news that Christopher at Rouen was in hospital and, although the hospital authorities had assured her, at first by telegram and then by letter, that it was nothing more than his chest, she had not had any knowledge of to what extent Red Cross authorities did or did not mislead the relatives of casualties.

So it had seemed natural that she should want to inflict on him all the injuries that she could at the moment, the thought that he was probably in pain making her wish to add all she could to that pain. Otherwise, of course, she would not have gone to Mark’s… . For it was a mistake in strategy. But then she said to herself: ‘Confound it! … What strategy was it a mistake in? What do I care about strategy? What am I out for? …’ She did what she wanted to, on the spur of the moment! …

Now she certainly realised. How Christopher had got round Mark she did not know or much care, but there Christopher certainly was, although his father had certainly died of a broken heart at the rumours that were going round about his son – rumours she, almost as efficiently as the man called Ruggles and more irresponsible gossips, had set going about Christopher. They had been
meant
to smash Christopher: they had smashed his father instead… . But Christopher had got round Mark, whom he had not seen for ten years… . Well, he probably would. Christopher was perfectly immaculate, that was a fact, and Mark, though he appeared half-witted in a North Country way, was no fool. He could not be a fool. He was a really august public official. And, although as a rule Sylvia gave nothing at all for any public official, if a man like Mark had the position by birth amongst presentable men that he certainly ought to have and was also the head of a department and reputed absolutely indispensable – you could not ignore him… . He said, indeed, in the later, more gossipy parts of his letter that he had been offered a baronetcy, but he wanted Christopher to agree with his refusing it. Christopher would not want the beastly title after his death, and for himself he would be rather struck with the pip than let that harlot – meaning herself – become Lady T. by any means of his. He had added, with his queer solicitude, ‘Of course if you thought of divorcing – which I wish to God you would, though I agree that you are right not to – and the title would go to the girl after my decease I’d take it gladly, for a title is a bit of a help after a divorce. But as it is I propose to refuse it and ask for a knighthood, if it won’t too sicken you to have me a Sir. For I hold no man ought to refuse an honour in times like these, as has been done by certain sickening intellectuals, because it is like slapping the sovereign in the face and bound to hearten the other side, which no doubt was what was meant by those fellows.’

There was no doubt that Mark – with the possible addition of the Wannops – made a very strong backing for Christopher if she decided to make a public scandal about him… . As for the Wannops … the girl was negligible. Or possibly not, if she turned nasty and twisted Christopher round her fingers. But the old mother was a formidable figure – with a bad tongue, and viewed with a certain respect in places where people talked … both on account of her late husband’s position and of the solid sort of articles she wrote… . She, Sylvia, had gone to take a look at the place where these people lived … a dreary street in an outer suburb, the houses – she knew enough about estates to know – what is called tile-healed, the
upper
parts of tile, the lower flimsy brick and the tiles in bad condition. Oldish houses really, in spite of their sham artistic aspect, and very much shadowed by old trees that must have been left to add to the picturesqueness. The rooms poky, and they must be very dark… . The residence of extreme indigence, or of absolute poverty… . She understood that the old lady’s income had so fallen off during the war that they had nothing to live on but what the girl made as a school-teacher, or a teacher of athletics in a girls’ school. She had walked two or three times up and down the street with the idea that the girl might come out, then it had struck her that that was rather an ignoble proceeding, really… . It was, for the matter of that, ignoble that she should have a rival who starved in an ashbin… . But that was what men were like; she might think herself lucky that the girl did not inhabit a sweetshop… . And the man, Macmaster, said that the girl had a good head and talked well, though the woman Macmaster said that she was a shallow ignoramus… . That last probably was not true; at any rate the girl had been the Macmaster woman’s most intimate friend for many years – as long as they were sponging on Christopher and until, lower middle-class snobs as they were, they began to think they could get into Society by carneying to herself… . Still, the girl probably was a good talker and, if little, yet physically uncommonly fit. A good homespun article… . She wished her no ill!

What was incredible was that Christopher should let her go on starving in such a poverty-stricken place when he had something like the wealth of the Indies at his disposal… . But the Tietjenses were hard people! You could see that in Mark’s rooms … and Christopher would lie on the floor as lief as in a goose-feather bed. And probably the girl would not take his money. She was quite right. That was the way to keep him… . She herself had no want of comprehension of the stimulation to be got out of parsimonious living… . In retreat at her convent she lay as hard and as cold as any anchorite, and rose to the nuns’ matins at four.

It was not, in fact, their fittings or food that she objected to – it was that the lay-sisters, and some of the nuns, were altogether too much of the lower classes for her to like to have always about her… . That was why it was to
the
Dames Nobles that she would go, if she had to go into retreat for the rest of her life, according to contract.

A gun manned by exhilarated anti-aircraft fellows, and so close that it must have been in the hotel garden, shook her physically at almost the same moment as an immense maroon popped off on the quay at the bottom of the street in which the hotel was. She was filled with annoyance at these schoolboy exercises. A tall, purple-faced, white-moustached general of the more odious type, appeared in the doorway and said that all the lights but two must be extinguished and, if they took his advice, they would go somewhere else. There were good cellars in the hotel. He loafed about the room extinguishing the lights, couples and groups passing him on the way to the door… . Tietjens looked up from his letter – he was now reading one of Mrs. Wannop’s – but seeing that Sylvia made no motion he remained sunk in his chair.

The old general said:

‘Don’t get up, Tietjens… . Sit down, lieutenant… . Mrs. Tietjens, I presume… . But of course I know you are Mrs. Tietjens… . There’s a portrait of you in this week’s … I forget the name… .’ He sat down on the arm of a great leather chair and told her of all the trouble her escapade to that city had caused him… . He had been awakened immediately after a good lunch by some young officer on his staff who was scared to death by her having arrived without papers. His digestion had been deranged ever since… . Sylvia said she was very sorry. He should drink hot water and no alcohol with his lunch. She had had very important business to discuss with Tietjens, and she had really not understood that they wanted papers of grown-up people. The general began to expatiate on the importance of his office and the number of enemy agents his perspicacity caused to be arrested every day in that city and the lines of communication… .

Sylvia was overwhelmed at the ingenuity of Father Consett. She looked at her watch. The ten minutes were up, but there did not appear to be a soul in the dim place… . The father had – and no doubt as a Sign that there could be no mistaking! – completely emptied that room. It was like his humour!

To make certain, she stood up. At the far end of the room, in the dimness of the one other reading lamp that
the
general had not extinguished, two figures were rather indistinguishable. She walked towards them, the general at her side extending civilities all over her. He said that she need not be under any apprehension there. He adopted that device of clearing the room in order to get rid of the beastly young subalterns who would use the place to spoon in when the lights were turned down. She said she was only going to get a timetable from the far end of the room… .